Bedtime's not quite this peaceful...but it's close

F OR THE LAST few years, my family’s bedtime routine has been one of divide and conquer. The H would take bathtime, I’d deal with pajamas and teeth. One of us would read to the Rock, who generally demanded at least three books, one of which had to contain Clifford, while the River, for the longest time, was really engaged by Laura and the Little House, which I alone would read. But this spring, something had to give, and I feared reprisals.

The H, bless him, has been traveling almost the whole year. He’s working on a wonderful project, but it has kept him not just out of town, but mostly out of the country, for the better part of the last four months. The thing I dreaded most, as I anticipated week up on week of solo parenting: bedtime. (Ok, the morning race to get out the door to school isn’t so fun either. But at least I’m rested when it begins.)

I found ways to make the nightly wind-down easier: both children no longer get bathed nearly every night; we alternate. And often skip it altogether. The River listens to a book on tape while I lie down with his sister for the last snuggles she needs in order to settle in to sleep.

But when it comes to bedtime stories, my kids are unified. They each want a choice, and they want to be read to together. That’s not so amazing, really, but I’ve been stunned by the level of mutual respect each shows the other when it comes to what they choose for their read-to-me material.

The Rock is tending towards fairies, dancers, and animals who love their mommas. (Who can argue?) Not only does the River listen intently, he sometimes takes over the reading if have lingering kitchen clean up to do. And he, though he can now read chapter books on his own just fine, prefers to read non-fiction to himself (he’s big on the history of World War II) and have the fantasy stuff read aloud. We’re deep into The Lightning Thief, the story of half-human, half-god, all 12 year old boy Perseus Jackson. (Unlike the movie version, the book is quite good.)

The Rock, who used to twist and turn and interrupt and sing and generally make everyone but herself highly agitated during the reading of the dreaded Books Without Pictures (oh, the injustice!) now snuggles up between me and her brother, listens intently, and asks questions that show she’s not just following along, but actually captivated.

Will this peaceable kingdom last? I have no idea. But when the H finally returns, he can take back bath duty. I’m keeping reading.

ON THE POSITIVE side: No one threw up. But what happens when you pack two not-so-copacetic siblings into the car for a four-hour ride? In our family: headphones, iPods, and a whole lot of discussion of just what makes boys so gross, anyway.

The Rock, of late, has taken to saying she wants to be a “traveler” when she grows up. Fair enough, except she was born into our family. To say we don’t travel much is like saying cats dislike water. Of course, it’s not that simple, right? Cats (at least our cat) are equally repelled and fascinated by water flowing from the faucet or cascading down in the shower. It seems so… shiny, but YIKES! Don’t go too near.

That’s pretty much our family’s relationship to the family vacation. Oooh. That place looks pretty. And relaxing…but oh no! The logistics! The expense! The…change of scene. It’s all so…scary. All those latter parts, are to be avoided, and as result, we haven’t taken a family vacation, other than long weekend visits to friends, in three years.

But this spring break, we’re headed off to Europe (first time in nine years for me), and so to get our feet wet, so to speak, we decided to spend this past long weekend on a trial run. We decided to take a road trip, all the way to Montréal.

This meant four hours trapped together in my car, which looks and smells like it’s dressed itself up to audition for Sanford and Son. In my defense, hey, I drive children around all damn day. They eat, mostly in my car, and treat the entire interior like one big recycling bin/sink/Kleenex.

Lord knows I’ve tried to get them to change their evil ways. Suggestions welcome, but they generally don’t seem to mind riding in the inside of a garbage can. Also in my defense, I tried to get it detailed before we left, but I couldn’t get an appointment, so I settled for the drive through wash and a quick trash-picking in the back seat. The smell abated enough for us to tolerate four hours, especially since that’s long enough so that the kids are allowed to watch movies on our iPods, short enough that the batteries will last the whole way. Two kids, two sets of headphones, two screens should add up to one quiet (if slightly grimy) ride. But, you see, one of those kids is a sister. And the other, as you know, is not.

Boys, the Rock discovered, in explicit and articulate fashion this trip, well–they’re gross. Only she says it more like this: GROOOOOOSSSSSSS. As in, “‘River!’ You ah so GROOOOOSSSSSSS.” (At 4, she tends to drop her r’s as though she’s grown up in Hahvahd Yahd. Non-New Yorkers sometimes say she sounds like she has a New York accent, but I can’t believe that’s true, so I chalk it all up to youth.)

The truth is, according to her, that boys are gross when they eat in the car. (No mention of her own unmentionable manners.) They are gross when they fart. They are gross when they pick their noses. (No one is arguing with her.) Did I mention they are GROOOOOSSSSSS when they eat in the car? And that the car, as a result, is DISGUSTING!!

“Mama! I cannot sit back here. IT’S GROOOOOSSSSSSS.”

Luckily, Montreal is a city, so you don’t really have to get back in your you-know-what car, not for four whole blissful days. But when you do finally load up for the return journey…

“Mama! This cah seat is GROOOOOSSSSSSS.”

Right. Four hours home.

I AM CONSTANTLY [choose one: bemused/ amused/ frustrated/ mystified] by the dynamics between my son, known around here as the River, and my daughter, aka the Rock. That mystery, or my sense that there must be one, only intensifies when I try to understand that most unique sibling relationship, that of twins (or, for that matter other multiples–say, how about those California octuplets?)

The multiple-birth topic flying around TSP these days is the now-solved mystery of picture-perfect twins Maurine and Noreene Everett, whose beautifully dressed portraits ended up in the hands of a vintage-photo collector. Thanks to a reader, we now know who these women were, a bit about their family, where they grew up, and so on. But what we can’t know, about them or really any other set of siblings, friends, or husbands and wives, for that matter, is the essence of what drew them together into those fabulous identical-outfit poses.

What did they have in common (other than an obvious love of great tailoring)? What did they argue about? I wonder about these things when I see my kids, heads together, shutting me and the rest of the world out–and when I hear the explosion resulting from a conflict that is, despite the outburst it occasioned, private, and certainly not to be shared with a mom.

As an only child, the intricacies of sisterhood are a mystery to me. A few months back, TSP’s Margaret Roach and I went to the movies together, where we watched I’ve Loved You So Long. At the end, I couldn’t wait to ask Margaret, “Was that true?” Not the story–I knew it was fiction. But the way the two women, brilliantly played by Kristin Scott Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein, circled each other, reached out and then ran away, and stayed together despite the pain they both suffered–was that real?

I see the same circling and loyalty (with, thankfully, smaller stakes and much less pain) in my kids–as much as they infuriate each another (and oh, lately, they do: I’ve taken to announcing that the prescription for ending the vicious fighting over Saturday-morning cartoon choices is to simply eliminate said cartoons. That threat works, for about 10 minutes, until they’re at it again). Each is always the other’s staunchest defender ( whether against end-of-TV parental threats, or other foes).

Recently, the Rock announced her plans to marry her best friend from preschool, a (truly adorable) little boy named Noah. River responded that such a union was impossible, given his sometimes-fractious relationship with Noah’s older brother. I told the older brother to mind his own business, and the subject shifted. A few days later, I asked Miss Rock about her wedding plans. Would parents be invited? The wedding might be off, she replied. Her brother had spoken.

When I look at the great pictures of Maurine and Noreene, I wonder how they sorted out their similarities (so strong) and differences (inevitable). What did Maureen think of Noreene’s husband, Donald? Did they stay as close throughout their lives as they appear in our wonderful Kodachrome archive? In this case, we may never know the intricacies of these clearly close sisters.

But what about the rest of you? Can you help this sisterless mom understand how you really feel about the people you’ve known forever? Can you freeze a moment in time from your sisterhood, to share with the rest of us?

LIKE MY FELLOW TSP blogger Anastasia, I’ve been pondering the Dooce pregnancy. (At least in the mommy-blog-osphere, it gets the definite article, just like the Obama Inauguration.) I remember the strange anticipation of my second child, the expected wondering about gender, personality and, in particular, how and what their relationships with each other would be. (Only child that I am, the thoughts ran to things like, “Am I ruining my first child’s life?”)

My anxiety was heightened, I think, because like Dooce, I suffered post-partum depression with my first pregnancy. Unlike Dooce, I didn’t get treatment for it, which was stubborn and foolish on my part. When I got pregnant the second time, I was deathly ill for five months (if you consider puking every day deathly ill, which I do). I was also very concerned that I’d have a repeat of the dark thoughts and malaise that plagued me after my son (aka the River) was born, and I told everyone who’d listen to Please. Watch. Out. For. My. Sanity.

As it turned out, my second episode of post-partum was much-delayed, not technically post-partum at all, though definitely depression. (And thanks to the assistance and intervention of friends, family and a great doctor, I was treated and felt much, much better.) But as a result of the delayed reaction, my daughter’s infancy was much easier for me than my son’s (quite possibly the only time I’ll reference my darling daughter, aka The Rock, as “easy.”) My more pleasant experience of her babyhood made me see the lost opportunities with my boy, and I sometimes wonder how my fragile state after his birth has affected him, and our relationship.

With the River’s little sister, though I am often baffled by her displays of will, I have a visceral understanding of her reactions. She’s super-rational, which is not to say that she can’t be capricious (she is 3, after all) but I can almost always empathize. The River, as I’ve written before, also lives up to his name. Most of the time, he goes with the flow, though, like any moving body of water, he can exert resistance, abruptly change direction, and wreak havoc. When he surprises me taking on these latter characteristics, I’m always taken aback, and I don’t always react well.

TAKE LAST NIGHT: He was at the kitchen table, faced with the most homework he’s ever had to do in one night. (Bitter, hard-to-learn life lesson: this is what happens when you leave it all to the night before it’s due. ) To make matters worse, his math assignment was two whole pages of problems, all the hated and feared subtraction. After a few minutes of pondering the worksheets, shifting back and forth between them trying to work up the courage to begin, he instead started to cry and bemoan his lack of ability.

His emotional outbursts tend toward the theatrical, for which, I’m not proud to admit, I have no patience. And so I snapped, and he cried more, and I felt like a bully who’d be referenced years later, no doubt in a therapy session or, if I’m lucky, his autobiography, as the cold and withholding mother who wouldn’t even show sympathy to a 7-year-old faced with the terror of the minus sign.

When things are rough between him and me, or between him and his sister, he’s been known to loudly proclaim that I show her preferential treatment. I used to write this off as ridiculous. But the older my kids get, and the more they experience their own conflicts (“I’m NEVER PLAYING WITH YOU AGAIN!”; or: “I wish I NEVER HAD A SISTER!”), the more I am forced to recognize that my easy ability to relate to his little sister’s internal traumas–and my difficulty in understanding his–does, at the end of the day, amount to a bias. And it’s one I don’t know how to tease out of our interactions, except to take a deep breath, and do what I’m always telling my kids to do when they’re about to take up arms against each other: Take a deep breath. Count to five. Think before you speak.

Wish me luck.

FILE THIS ONE under “Awww, that’s sweet.” Twins Jenna and Barbara Bush, who I’ve never found particularly interesting or, to be frank, worthy of admiration, went a long way toward redemption in my eyes with their letter to the Obama sisters, published yesterday in The Wall Street Journal. Their gentle, playful tone is a good reminder that those poor girls had to endure adolescence in the public eye, never an easy experience (just ask Amy Carter, or Chelsea Clinton.) But they had each other, and, it seems, they had fun. Of course, a cynic might think that the twins were just trying to steal some thunder from the man of the hour. After all, the President’s heartwarming letter to his daughters was released Sunday. Either way you look at it, there’s a lot of love and good advice flowing towards the darling Obama girls. Let’s hope it continues.